by N. D. Wilson
Kit Cacamatzin Carson spoke to the warriors in another tongue, and Alex’s arms were pinned to his sides before he could move. A huge hand gripped his wrists tight behind his back and his watches dropped, dangling to the floor.
“Alex!” Rhonda yelled. “Slow it all down!”
Alex tried to twist free, but a heavy sword landed on his shoulder and its cold stone edge nipped at his neck. Kit disappeared back through the wall. The werejaguar rose to his hind legs and stepped toward Alex. His eyes were wild, his human face tattooed, and his fangs monstrous. With twitching, flaring nostrils, he sniffed at Alex’s face, and then turned toward Rhonda. The warrior behind Alex levered his wrists and arms up, propelling him out of the room and into the dark opening in the wall. Rhonda yelped as she was forced in after him.
The walls of the narrow passage skimmed Alex’s shoulders, and then he was thrust into a silent but crowded torchlit chamber. Young men and women, boys and girls stood against the walls, practically motionless under the eyes of a few watchful guards. Dark haired and dark skinned, all of them were tied at the wrists and ankles and smeared with blue paint. The werejaguar dropped onto all fours and paced, snarling, in front of the bound blue crowd. Alex saw children flinch away, but he was already being steered elsewhere, thrust into a wider hallway lined with torches mounted on square, carved columns.
Sticky outdoor air mingled with smoke in his nostrils, and a breeze brought him the sound of thousands of distant voices, like the wash of a wave on the beach. The sound grew, and Alex emerged from the hallway onto a high stone platform beneath a bright full moon.
The scene was difficult to process. The platform was broad, at least the length of a football field, the crown of a massive pyramid, and it held side-by-side temples, one of which Alex had just exited. A ring of Spanish soldiers in full suits of armor guarded the other temple—many with long spears, the rest with swords drawn, braced for an attack.
“Alex!” Rhonda said behind him. “Conquistadors!”
“Yes!” Kit Cacamatzin said. He was walking straight out from the temple toward the platform’s edge. “Spanish fools. I’ll thwart them yet. Why should they get all the pillage? Come!”
Alex twisted and kicked at the warrior behind him, trying to tear his wrists free, but the man kicked him in the back of the right knee, buckling his leg and crunching him face first onto the stone floor, then pressing his knee and fist into his back.
Kit shouted and the pressure vanished. The man released his wrists and backed away. Alex spat blood and pushed himself up. He might be taller and broader, but he didn’t have any more experience fighting than when he’d been bookworming his way through tales of orc battles back in his duplex. The warrior hadn’t even used his weapon . . . or both hands.
Worn boots appeared in front of Alex’s face, and then Kit Carson dropped into a low crouch, leaning his feathered head into view and grinning.
“Not much, are ya?” he asked. “No wonder you’re just a worm for Dervish’s hook. Most who find their way through the timeless darkness into this temple have a bit more . . .” He rubbed his bloody fingertips against his thumb, searching for a phrase. “. . . salt in their blood. I figured you for a hard one, a bad man for the tall tales, an outlaw for the dime novels. But no?”
Alex rose to his knees and then climbed to his feet. The man called Kit rose with him, eyeing him skeptically.
“I could use a bad man from the frontier tonight,” Kit said. He gestured back at the Spanish guards that separated the two temples. “A man who could take a hundred lives and still sleep well and wake hungry. But she sends me you.”
Alex gathered up the chains to his watches in his right hand.
“What are you in it for?” Kit asked. “Gold? Fame?”
Alex thought about it. He had wanted adventure, back when he had no idea what that word even meant. His imagination, at least, had loved the idea of doing hard things, of sacrificing, of fearlessly facing down enormous evils like his fictional heroes. But when Dervish had put the chain leashes in him, his desire to be a hero had vanished. All he had done was try to survive. He didn’t want to save people. What was the point of that? His heart kicked and he felt his blood warm. The veins in his temples twitched. He wanted . . . whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. Freedom? Power? Was there a difference?
“A life. Adventure.” Alex sniffed and dabbed at a bleeding nostril. “Power. I guess.”
Kit nodded. “Then this is the night for you.” Grabbing Alex by his buffalo sleeve, he pulled him away from Rhonda and the warriors, toward the edge of the platform. “Welcome to Tenochtitlán in 1520. We’re up on top of the grandest pyramid. It wears these two temples like twin heads. The Spanish have taken one of them, along with the emperor. We hold the other. Bit of a standoff. And not one I plan on losing.”
Near the edge, two enormous cauldrons of flame sat on the backs of giant stone toads. Between them there was a low column, waist high, carved like a squatting man, and it was glistening with what looked like oil. As he walked toward it, Alex could see that it wasn’t oil at all. It was blood.
Kit guided Alex around the bloody column and stopped on the edge of the platform. Hundreds of feet down the widest, steepest stairs Alex had ever seen, a crowd of thousands swarmed like angry ants. Warriors in feathered armor with drums. Warriors with long spears and massive stone-edged swords, women with torches. Spaniards were down there, too, a ring of armored infantrymen guarding hundreds of warhorses, dozens of wagons, and their own precipitous flight of temple stairs. The crowd was entirely focused on the soldiers, seething, pacing, pointing, chanting. Women in bright dresses and terrifying masks danced right up to the soldiers, flashing stone knives, taunting, cursing, even slashing themselves and flinging the blood at the invaders.
Kit slapped Alex on the shoulder. “Here’s how this works, cowboy. You and your guns help me handle the Spanish tonight, or . . . I can cut your heart out and kick your carcass downstairs to the crowd. I don’t think the boss lady will much care which. That adventure enough for you?”
Alex didn’t answer. His eyes were scanning the mob below. The Spanish were doomed. How could they not be? They had only hundreds circled up against tens of thousands. He saw a few clunky, musket-looking rifles, but for the most part, it was entirely edged weapons against edged weapons. Last summer, in his tiny backyard, he’d watched hornets dismembered by ants on an anthill. He couldn’t imagine that this result would be much different.
“The Spanish are toast,” he said. “What are they even doing?”
“You don’t know the story? Most of those boys die and good riddance. They lose the battle but not the war, because Cortés escapes. He comes back later and does what pirates always do,” Kit said. “Seeking fame and fortune. But this time around, we’re bushwhacking the whole situation, hijacking a religion and two empires at once. The Spaniards have only stayed alive so far by holding the emperor hostage in the other temple. But he won’t last the night. And neither will Cortés and his gang. Not this time.”
Kit glanced back at the temple behind him and then drew a stone blade from his belt and raised both of his hands high.
“Cacamatzin!” he bellowed. Heads below turned up toward the mad cowboy, and he shouted again, this time a whole string of syllables that Alex couldn’t understand, followed by two that he could.
“DER-VISH!”
Thousands of hands rose in reply and the shout was returned in unison. The Spanish seemed to almost relax, as the dancers and warriors drifted away.
“Time to pay the piper,” Kit said.
And then drummers began to drum.
Alex braced one hand on a giant fire toad and leaned forward, trying to fully comprehend the steepness of the stairs and the vastness of the structure these people had built.
Behind him, he heard sobbing.
Two warriors were carrying a young weeping boy to the short column while the werejaguar danced and prowled around them, lashing his tail and sniffing at the
bloody stone.
Kit roared, raising his knife to the sky. His shirt and vest flapped in the warm, sticky breeze.
Drums like thunder rolled in reply. The warriors bent the boy backward over the column, gripping his ankles and wrists tight. His painted blue body jerked and twitched and his eyes rolled in terror. Snot and tears shone on his face.
Kit positioned himself at the boy’s head and raised his knife.
Alex felt his own heart stop, his throat tightening with fear.
“Wait!” he yelled. “No! What are you doing?”
Kit Carson looked up into Alex’s eyes and grinned. “You never been to church? Or a play? It’s called theater. I’m gonna need that mob down below. I sacrifice to Dervish, so they’ll all know she’s the goods when Cortés and the Spaniards are slaughtered. She’ll be their new goddess by morning.”
“No!” Alex shook his head and stepped toward the altar, holding one trembling arm above the boy and gripping his watch chains with the other. “I’m sorry. I can’t let you. I don’t mind if you fight the Spanish, they’re stealing, I guess, but you can’t just murder people.”
“Murder?” Kit smirked. “People? He’s another kind of Injun. They’re all Injuns. Hard to argue with less Injuns. I got more in common with those filthy armored Spanish, and I hate ’em all. I’d gut them just as gladly and call it God’s charity.”
The drums below quickened, and the crowd rumbled anticipation.
Terremoto, let him. It will be interesting. You know you want to, I can feel it in you.
“No,” Alex said. “It’s evil. You’re evil. You’ve probably been evil your whole life, but I can’t let you just kill a kid. You can’t.”
“Can’t?” Kit snarled. “Oh, but I can. And I’ll do your Chinese next. Then I’ll eat your soft sorry heart.”
The stone knife plunged down. Alex flung his watches up.
The flames in the toad bowls became as still as hot blown glass. A single drumbeat stretched into a long throbbing peal of thunder. The tip of the knife was only centimeters from the boy’s chest and still descending, but Alex knew he had time. Brushing back his coat, he drew his gun.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he said. And he looked at the bizarre form of Kit Carson, Indian killer of the old west turned bloodthirsty, mercenary time pirate. The man’s upper lip was curled in a snarl leaving his nasty tobacco-stained teeth bare—at least the ones still in his mouth.
Alex leaned forward, pressing the barrel of his revolver against Kit’s pale bare chest. Heat boiled inside him. Anger. And deep inside him, a strange perverse joy. He was going to kill.
Kill.
It made him think of Cindy the snake, in the book about his father. If Sam Miracle could resist the evil urges of rattlesnakes, couldn’t Alex? But Dervish wasn’t in his arms . . . she had chains in his heart. She was boiling in his veins. Alex didn’t care so much about the kid anymore, he just wanted to tear this man to pieces, and he wanted him to know it was happening. He wanted the death to be slow. He thumb cocked the shiny hammer on the pistol and excitement buzzed in his temples.
The tip of Kit’s stone knife had nearly reached the boy’s skin on the altar.
But there was another voice in Alex. The guy was clearly evil. But could he just shoot him point blank while he was frozen? Would that just make him the villain Dervish wanted?
Who cares? Who will even know?
“I do,” Alex said. “I will.”
Lowering the gun, he used the barrel to push the knife away from the boy’s chest.
Kit’s eyes bounced quickly up to meet Alex’s, and Alex flinched in surprise.
“Coward,” a voice said behind him, and Alex spun around. The enormous jaguar was pacing toward him, with not a trace of man about him. Except for the voice. “You think we’ve never seen a time-shifting sack of man-flesh before? What do you think this temple is for? How do you think we came to be here? I have wandered centuries and spent months inside moments. Your watch tricks won’t work on us.”
Alex pointed his revolver at the big cat. The air still throbbed with stretched drums. “Stay back. I won’t mind shooting you at all.”
“The smell of the darkness beyond time is all over you,” the cat rumbled. “I will taste it in your blood.”
From behind, a fist collided with Alex’s ear and sharp pain split his scalp. As he slipped and staggered sideways, the jaguar roared and leapt through the air, claws extended.
The gun went off in Alex’s hand and he hit the ground hard, watches clattering around him. Time accelerated. Drums, shouts, the crying boy, the ringing echo of the gunshot. And then claws in his shoulders and jaws snapping at his throat.
Alex managed to get his forearm into the animal’s mouth. Cocking the gun at his side, he fired into its belly once. Twice. The cat went limp. And then it wasn’t a cat anymore, it was a man.
“Alex, look out!” Rhonda screamed.
A huge stone-edged sword was descending at his head. Shoving the dead man up like a shield, he rolled away and heard the wet heavy crunch of the blow on the body behind him while he scrambled to his feet, gun raised, searching for targets.
Kit spoke and the warriors each took a step back, still with their huge blades raised.
“Stay back,” Alex said. “I’ll kill you.”
“Had one chance at that,” Kit said. “I won’t give you another.” Walking forward, he bent and picked up something off the ground beside the werejaguar’s body.
Alex’s gun. He grabbed at his left holster. Empty.
“Dropped one,” Kit said, cocking the hammer. “Only things I miss about home. The smell of gunpowder, and killing over distance.”
A singular voice roared, and the crowd became suddenly silent. In front of the other temple on top of the pyramid, surrounded by Spanish soldiers, an enormous man dressed all in gold and feathers raised his hands to speak. He was flanked by his own warriors and accompanied by a single Spaniard, almost as tall, fully armored, and with a dark beard protruding beneath his finned conquistador helmet.
The feathered man began to speak. Laughing, Kit looked at Alex.
“Two birds, one gun,” the man said. “Solves everything. You ready for the rodeo?”
“What’s going on?” Alex asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Cortés over there is trying to control the people with Montezuma, so he can get back to his looting in peace. If Cortés lives, this whole empire falls and Dervish will have no use for me. But if they both die . . .”
Without hesitation, Kit raised the revolver with both hands, and he fired. The feathered king flinched, slipped, and then tumbled forward off the stairs. His body crunched and flipped down hundreds of feet, trailing plumage and gold.
For one small moment, his fall was the only sound. The crowd below was shocked into silence. The Spanish were stunned.
And then, just as the silence was giving way to rage, Kit Carson fired again. Twice.
With two metallic punches through his armor, Hernán Cortés, one-time conqueror of the Aztecs, was conqueror no more. Looking down at the holes in his breastplate, the big Spaniard dropped to his knees, teetered, and then toppled headlong, crunching and clattering after the emperor, descending into the sea of human fury below.
The circle of armored conquistadors was collapsing inward. Men and horses were screaming. Steel flashed and sparked against stone-edged blades as battle erupted.
“Hail Cacamatzin,” Kit Carson said. “Hail Dervish. Now the Spanish will all die, and this empire and all its gold and power will pass to us.” He pointed the gun at Alex’s head. “You shouldn’t have killed my cat.”
Alex dove to the ground, scooping up his watches. Kit laughed while Alex tried to fling the six timepieces up into the air. Three floated. Then three more.
Everything slowed for Alex. The battle, the firelight, the sound. But not everyone. Kit was still grinning, still moving at full speed.
“You’re new at this,” Kit said. His free h
and was gripping a large jade charm on his necklace. “Too bad.” He cocked the pistol with his thumb. “I told you it wouldn’t happen again. You think I can’t time shift? You know Dervish sent me here. You ain’t the only man to bargain with devils. Look at me. I was born centuries from now. I got no kind of strength, and now I’ll make this empire mine. It ain’t because of—”
Alex rocked back and shot him. One round in the shoulder. The impact sent the pale man staggering, but he kept his gun pointed at Alex . . . pulling the trigger as his hand slipped off his jade time-charm necklace.
Alex’s head spun. The side of his neck jerked.
He’d been shot.
Shot.
In the neck.
Alex blinked, trying to focus. Was this real? Was that supposed to happen? He would wake up or something. The watches would wind the bullet back. Mrs. Dervish would show up and laugh at him, but he’d be alive.
Right?
Wrong.
Kit was still on his feet, but statue slow now, looking down at Alex, trying to aim his gun, reaching at sloth speed for the charm on his necklace. But did it matter?
Alex raised one hand to his throat, scared to touch the wound, but more frightened not to. His neck was hot and slick. The wound was behind his beard, just under his jaw, to the right of his Adam’s apple. The skin around the wet hole didn’t feel like his own.
The world was blurring. The first of Alex’s watches hit the ground. And then three more. Everything exploded back into full speed. And a snarling Kit Cacamatzin Carson leaned toward him for the kill.
An enormous gray owl dropped out of the darkness, sinking its talons into Kit’s extended arm, driving the man to the ground. A second, smaller owl followed, ripping his necklace and charm away and shredding his bare chest.
Alex tipped over onto his back and his head bounced on stone. The buffalo coat felt very, very warm. For the first time, he wondered about the buffalo that had worn it before him. Where had that buffalo roamed? That’s what they did, right? Roam? Did it like roaming?